Review of "River Variations"
Randall Steeves: ”River Variations”
-By Pauline Conley
At the heart of Randall Steeves’ “River Variations”, is a belief in specificity. “If you go deep enough into anything,” says Steeves, “you are going to end up with something that matters.”
Steeves has entered into the creation of “River Variations” by way of a meditative consideration of a very specific location. The work consists of forty confidently rendered panels, all of the same subject. The subject in this case is a tree that Steeves first discovered in a volume documenting his own family history (the tree is said to mark the very spot where the Steeves family first landed in New Brunswick in 1766). A single painting based on this photograph first appeared in his 2004 exhibition “Medium of Proof”. Wanting to spend more time with this subject, the artist contacted the director of the Steeves Family Museum and the president of the New Brunswick Genealogy Society, and was eventually led to the very place the original photo was taken on the shores of the Petitcodiac River that runs through his home town of Moncton, NB. Steeves’ experience of the place, chronicled in his research, studies and over 100 photographs of the site, is captured in the random, shifting perspective that has become integral to the impact of the exhibition.
The result of this enquiry is forty individual paintings of a single tree, with the concept of variation becoming central to the consideration of the work. As with musical variations, Steeves has taken a central theme and expanded on it to create a visceral reverberation and resonance. Many of the images depict the same tree from apparently similar viewpoints with the frame only slightly shifted in one direction or the other. The subject moves towards and away from the viewer. In some the image of the tree is reversed, and in some inverted. In still others portions of the landscape are obliterated with red or black smears and carefully rendered fingerprints, and a large violent X appears on another. These marks, and the shifts and inversions of the subject, give this installation a rhythm, cadence and overall musicality.
As successful as the overall narrative of the show is, the individual paintings are poignant explorations of the central theme in their own right. In close consideration of the individual works the viewer discovers the complex textural interference that is the physical surface of the painting itself. Encaustic, or beeswax mixed with pigment, has been Steeves’ medium of choice for some time. The wax is applied hot in its liquid form, but hardens as soon as it touches the canvas. What the viewer is left with is a distinct and seductive chronology of the painting’s construction, and of the artist’s physical gesture. The physicality of the medium is reinforced by surface interference in the form of large renderings of fingerprints. The prints are Steeves’ own – he had himself ‘processed’ by the Vancouver Police department in preparation for this work – and vary, both in framing and intensity, from central compositional elements to faint suggestions. All of these blemishes serve to remind us not only of the existence of the painter, but of the substance of the painting itself. These marks re-inform the surface of the painting as a site where the dialogue between the viewer and the painter begins. The subject, (the tree, the river, the clouds), becomes secondary and is replaced by the unvarnished gesture and physical intention of the painter as the loci of exchange.
Steeves has indeed entered his subject deeply, to the benefit of those who have the good fortune to see this show. “River Variations” represents the visual insight of a talented painter, and the captivating musings of an ardent thinker and artist. Randall Steeves is represented by Elissa Cristall Gallery, where the “River Variations” will be on view from March 17th to April 8th.
Pauline Conley is an artist, curator and Arts Programs Administrator.